Lying from the Tip of Our Tongues

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Lying from the Tip of Our Tongues

Tell the truth, live the truth, do the truth, or there will be terrible consequences.

-Gwen Rice Clark

You come through the door and you see that look in their eyes, they know. All this time, all those lies; all of it just to make sure that they didn’t have to know, all so they didn’t get that look in their eyes. Now you enter further into the room and there’s no stopping the inevitable, one fact remained. You lied. For whatever reason, whatever excuse you hoped was logical enough in your mind so that it didn’t seem as wrong as it truly was, that doesn’t matter. Because the motives and the analyzing were and are in the end moot points, as it is said, through it all “the end does not justify the means”, Eluki bes Shahar. Like it or not, that’s what lying is, a means to an end.

Why should people care about it? That’s too broad an enigma to tackle so impulsively. First one must challenge the nature of the problem; because it is a problem. For no matter who you are, how honest you might think yourself or how many lies you have told, at the end of the day, not even you know the answer to this question: Why do people lie?

Lying is being deceitful. It is construed in more cases than not, as the opposite of being truthful. Yet, there’s more to it than that. A person can lie without actually saying anything false. There’s such a thing as ‘lying by omission’ and little ‘white lies’ to keep people baffled as to what dishonesty is. In reality, mendaciousness is a sickness that haunts its nurturers without letting go. Then, after a while, a person can get so good at this ‘skill’ that they even begin to lie to themselves.

What’s the i...

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Schweitzer, Maurice E. and Christopher K. “Stretching the Truth: Elastic Justification and Motivated Communication of Uncertain Information”. 2002. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 8 April. 2004. <http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/christopher.hsee/vita/Papers/StretchingTheTruth.pdf>

Vrij, Aldert, Lucy Akehurst, Stavroula Soukara, and Ray Bull. “Detecting Deceit Via Analyses of Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior in Children and Adults.” January 2004. Ohiolink. 7 April, 2004. <http://journals.ohiolink.edu/local-cgi/send-pdf/040314132256522215.pdf>

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